


Oh, You Pretty Things!

by opalheart12



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Hate to Love, M/M, Other Things Probably, Possessive Hannibal Lecter, Rivalry, Sassy Will Graham, art thieves, forced to work together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25749709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalheart12/pseuds/opalheart12
Summary: Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter are the world's most notorious art thieves. A bitter rivalry forms between them when Will poaches a piece from Hannibal and leaves him holding the bag. But when murders start happening at the very museums they steal from, they become fugitives and must work together to clear their name and find out just who is trying to move them off the chessboard and why.
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Beverly Katz, Bella Crawford/Jack Crawford, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	1. It Begins

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally my first ever Hannibal fic so please be kind. This property is super intimidating.

The rivalry began on a sunny day in early spring at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. 

It was a Monday which meant that naturally the museum was closed to visitors. That was hardly enough to stop the older man sitting on the bench as he thoughtfully considered the portrait before him, a lesser-known Boticelli that was more valuable, to him at least, than its more notorious siblings. 

He didn’t look so out of place there. Had the museum been open that day he might have blended in with the rest of the crowd. He was well dressed in a three-piece suit that was the color of the sky just before a formidable downpour and a dress shirt that was not so dissimilar to the color of the North Sea this time of year. A charcoal-colored briefcase sat upright on the floor near his feet. 

The man rose from the bench with a deep sigh. He would need to be quick. His buyer was leaving the country in two hours and would be as easy to find again as smoke in the night. He opened his briefcase and took out the gleaming golden box cutter inside and the telescope tube he was to put the painting in. It might have been easy getting it  _ in _ the suitcase empty but he’d figure out what to do once the painting was inside it when he actually got it off the wall. Tobias had already disabled the mountain of security systems in the museum which ensured no alarm would go off once the man removed the painting from its frame. At least, not for thirty seconds. 

The man was halfway through freeing the painting from its confines when he heard the unmistakable sound of expensive shoes on the old wooden floors of the museum growing closer and closer. His jaw clenched slightly as he pulled the box cutter gingerly from the painting and stepped back from the wall. From where he stood, one would have to practically put their nose against the canvas to see that it was torn. Luckily, it wasn’t falling out of its frame yet. But it wouldn’t take long for it to if given the right push.

“I didn’t know I’d have company today.” He said out loud.

“The infamous Hannibal Lecter. I have to say it’s an honor to meet you at last.” The voice spoke in a low Southern drawl that Hannibal registered as south Louisianian in origin. “You’re late, you know. I was expectin’ you hours ago.”

Hannibal straightened and turned to face his visitor. He was shorter than him by only a few inches and looked like an impeccably dressed college professor. Curly brown hair was styled away from his face, making his bright blue eyes appear almost owlish.

“You must forgive me but I am afraid you know more about me than I do of you.” Hannibal’s voice was, as always, inscrutably flat. He considered the man before him, his eyes sweeping hungrily over his figure. As the gold boxcutter began to weigh a bit more heavily in his hand, Hannibal calculated that the man could be dead in mere seconds if it came to it.

“Dr. William Graham. My enemies call me Will and so would my friends if I had any of those.” The man walked around the bench Hannibal had occupied only moments before to stand next to him. He engrossed himself in the painting for a few moments. “I never cared much for Boticelli. Bit too pretentious for my tastes but even I can admit I know good art when I see it. What a shame this hardly qualifies.”

Hannibal looked over at Will curiously. “How could it not?”

Will glanced over at him, amusement on his face. “I’m surprised you can’t see it. Everything I know about you suggested you would. But, one art thief to another, I’ll let you know now, Dr. Lecter, that you’re wastin’ your time. This ain’t good art.”

Hannibal felt his annoyance at his visitor grow exponentially by the second. “What makes you so certain of this?” He felt his grip tighten on the boxcutter. Will Graham was wasting what little precious time Hannibal had to steal the painting.

The man took a small pocket knife from the inside of his jacket and reached up slightly to finish the job Hannibal had started. The painting began to tip down toward the floor. 

“It’s a fake.” Will turned toward Hannibal now with a lopsided grin. “I took the real one this mornin’.”

Just then, the museum lights went dark and the shrill sound of an alarm began to blare around them. Hannibal felt his jaw clench tightly as he looked around. The alarms weren’t meant to go off for another thirty seconds. “What have you done, Dr. Graham?” He asked coldly. 

Will shrugged as he backed away with that ridiculously crooked smile on his face. Hannibal had the sudden urge to give his box cutter a home in the man’s face. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Lecter. I suppose you might wanna get a move on though. The police will be here in about three minutes. The doors to the museum lockdown in one.” He gave a halfhearted wave and disappeared into the pressing darkness. 

Hannibal repressed a snarl and looked up again at the painting wondering if there was any truth to what Graham had said. As the painting fell to the floor he decided it didn’t matter.  _ If _ it was a fake it was a damn good one. And Hannibal was certain it could still be valuable. 

He had just put the painting into the telescope tube when another set of footsteps echoed in the museum. This time it was more than one pair, boots if the sound were anything to go by. 

Heavy body armor. 

Guns.

Police.

The tube fell from his hands and clattered to the floor at the same time that several Interpol agents entered the room. It had been a trap, Hannibal realized. There was no buyer. There never had been.

He couldn’t help laughing as he was handcuffed and forced out of the museum and into a police car. The day had grown moderately darker as clouds stretched across the sky. “Oh,  _ vai a farti fottere, _ Will Graham.  _ Vai a farti fottere _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation of what Hannibal says at the end of the chapter: "Vai a farti fottere" means "Go fuck yourself" in Italian (according to an hour of Google searches). Hope you enjoyed this! Comments would be nice.


	2. Get Yours, I’ll Get Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back with another update! Hope you guys enjoy!

“You owe me a trip to the Maldives for Christmas, Hannibal. You have  _ no idea _ how difficult it is to bribe an international organization into releasing one of the most high profile suspects it has ever arrested. Allegedly, of course.”

The woman regarded him with a bored glare as they rode to the private airfield outside Rome. It had been almost two months now since Hannibal had gotten played by some professory little asshole who’d stolen a job right from under him and been arrested.

“You shall have it, Bedelia.” Hannibal replied. “First class on an Emirates flight. You will want for nothing.”

“I would expect nothing less.” Bedelia replied, looking for all the world as if she were judging him for his continued existence. “We will fly to Geneva first and then to Madrid. Garrett and Tobias are waiting for you there. Abel sends his regards from Baltimore. He got a little...tied up.”

Hannibal hummed to himself in response. Of everyone in their little crew, Abel was often out of commission due to the unfortunate condition he had of being a serial killer. He escaped every now and then when he wanted a vacation but he was just as valuable inside that hospital for the criminally insane as he was outside it. Garrett and Tobias were his brand of crazy but had, fortunately, decided not to limit themselves to aspiring to the notoriety of people like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and the like.

“And what of your research about our little friend?” Hannibal asked innocently enough.

Bedelia wordlessly tossed him a manila envelope as she continued to scroll through her phone. Hannibal found himself wondering what on earth was so important in that tiny little box that always seemed glued to her hand.

He picked up the envelope and took out the file inside. When he opened it, the face that greeted him looked so innocent and soft that something in his chest jumped. Were it not for their encounter in the Uffizi, Hannibal would have assumed he was looking at a picture of an accomplished anorak. 

“Doctor William Zephirin Graham. Born in Chataignier, Louisiana to Rosalie and Artemon Graham on November 27, 1983. He was sent to New Orleans to live with his uncle, Beau Graham, after his parents drowned during a hurricane in 1998. Graduated from Tulane with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and went on to Harvard for a PhD in classical archaeology. He’s published five books on the psychology of crime in the ancient world that have all been wildly successful.” Bedelia recited flatly. 

Hannibal frowned to himself. What on earth was a highly visible and august archaeology professor doing stealing art from the Uffizi? “And how did he come to join our delicate profession?” 

Bedelia examined her perfectly manicured hands with a smirk before tossing her gleaming gold hair over her shoulders. “He started while he was in graduate school if you can believe it. I do so admire a man with a voracious appetite for self sufficiency.” 

“Interesting.”

The rest of the ride to the airfield and much of the flight to Geneva was spent, for Hannibal at least, in quiet contemplation. The man who played him was certainly intriguing. He’d read through the rest of the file Bedelia had assembled for him and wondered how someone as supposedly bright as Will Graham had come to resort to art theft to support himself through graduate school. Curious still was why he still did when he was so widely known and respected in his academic community. The man had spent three years teaching at  _ Oxford _ . 

Hannibal wondered how he’d overridden Tobias’s impeccable security hacking. He supposed he could find out when he arrived in Madrid. Something was already telling him that Tobias would take personal offense to being shown up and would have likely already added Graham to his shit list. 

But despite the profusion of information Bedelia found and passed on to him, Hannibal could not for the life of him figure out why Will Graham got him arrested after poaching a job for him.

* * *

He would be lying if he said that watching that smug fucker get cuffed hadn’t made him feel bullish for a few months. Will Graham had finally gotten the man’s attention. More than that, he had signaled to every potential customer in his particularly clandestine line of work that there was someone else out there who could get the job done faster and far more efficiently than the great Hannibal Lecter.

Will was nothing if not competitive. He had jumped the gun in Florence. Botticelli paintings were only valuable to a certain kind of customer. It took weeks of staking out the museum for Will to finally put it together that it was being targeted for a job by someone else that wasn’t him. The art world was a fairly small one and the underground trading world was even smaller. He had used process of elimination: there was only one man who would be brazen enough to steal from the fucking Uffizi.

It thrilled Will to know that he had beaten him. He had cemented his own reputation as more than just some square professor from a backwater Cajun town that studied old shit for a living. He was more than that. He had to be.

Will had been twenty-three when he’d begun working under Frederick Chilton for his PhD. His advisor had taken a rather unfortunate hands on approach to things and, when Will had threatened to go to the Dean, threatened Will with revoking his scholarship. And so he had. It had been through a fellowship with the MET in New York that he’d come to be acquainted with one Freddie Lownds. 

To say Freddie was a shady bitch was an understatement but she had seen something in him that made her take enough pity to show him the ways of the world. He’d returned to his program in the fall a million dollars richer and a rather ebullient outlook when Chilton was eventually fired for misconduct. 

And so Will Graham had continued on making his way in the world, becoming a widely regarded and respected academic. His five monographs on crime in the ancient world had generated enough notoriety in the academic sphere that he could work at any university he wanted to. He’d certainly progressed past the need to commit international crime at least a decade ago. 

But he’d grown addicted to the high that came with planning and executing a job. There was a part of him that relished in the invisibility and secrecy of it all. As of late, though, he found himself repeatedly turning over in his mind why he’d also felt a baffling thrill at besting Hannibal Lecter.

Beverly and Alana had been absolutely furious when they’d found out what he’d done. It had not been part of the plan. But Will Graham was an ornery old bastard from Chataignier, Louisiana that was now a renowned professor at the most prestigious institution in the country. His entire fucking life had not been part of the plan. 

“Wake the fuck up, Will.”

It was Beverly. She was snapping her fingers in front of his face. He frowned and blinked away his thoughts. “Shit. Were you sayin’ somethin’?” 

Beverly rolled her eyes as she turned her laptop toward him. “Your boyfriend’s out.”

Will felt his blood stop cold in his veins. Out? What the fuck did that mean? “He can’t be. INTERPOL arrested him.”

“Apparently not,” Beverly replied. “They cited a lack of witnesses  _ and  _ evidence. Dropped all charges.

“That’s impossible! They literally  _ caught _ him in the act!”

Beverly put her hands up in a placating gesture. “Woah. Don’t shoot the messenger! Anyway, I’m sure this has  _ nothing _ to do with anything but apparently the President of INTERPOL just announced that the organization received an anonymous donation for additional funding though.” 

If Will’s eyes rolled any harder they’d be sitting in his lap. So the bastard had  _ bribed _ his way out. It shouldn’t have been as shocking as it was. He should have expected that a man with as many years of experience as Hannibal would have endless resources to help him get out of any conceivable spot of trouble he might find himself in.

“Yeah, nothin’ at all to do with him flyin’ the coop. Motherfucker. I reckon this means we need to find our next job before he beats us to it. He won’t be too happy with me.” 

“Good,” Beverly said as she slammed her laptop shut and glared at him. “Then I won’t be the only one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interesting things are happening! Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter.


	3. Doesn’t Time Fly?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty short but it gets us where we need to go. Enjoy!

It was six months before Will and Hannibal ran into one another again at a fundraising gala for the National Gallery in London. Well, ran into each other long enough to hold a conversation at least. The time between this encounter and their last were far from uneventful though.

There had been Madrid where Hannibal procured several Dali paintings practically out of Will’s fingertips on Easter Sunday. Luckily, Will escaped the museum before the police arrived but he was pissed all the same. If he was honest, he’d expected Hannibal’s reaction to seeing him again to be worse. But he supposed poaching from him was revenge enough.

The problem was that Will  _ couldn’t get enough  _ of competing with Hannibal.

There was Athens where Will successfully procured an obscure but extremely valuable statue of Athena by having Beverly and Zeller cause several traffic diversions to slow Hannibal and his crew from getting to the museum first. By the time they did arrive, Will and his team had practically cleaned out the place.

Thus, when they finally saw each other again in London, Hannibal was brimming with curiosity and annoyance. He knew now that, for whatever reason, Dr. Will Graham was fucking with him. Try as he might, he couldn’t understand why. Still, he would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the thrill of the chase. He had been in his clandestine line of work for nearing two decades now and it had gotten rather boring and predictable if he was honest.

Will Graham was a welcome change of pace even if he was a pain in the ass.

“Fancy seein’ you here.” A gravelly Cajun adjacent voice said from next to him. Hannibal looked over and saw the thorn in his side personified.

“Indeed.” He replied coldly as he assessed the other man.

Will wore a deep emerald green suit with a white dress shirt and umber colored dress shoes. Around his neck was a neat diamond patterned black tie. He was wearing glasses unlike the first time Hannibal had seen him which made his owlish eyes seem magnified. Once more his flop of curly brown hair was styled away from his face. He still looked as unassuming as ever. 

He made a big show of peering at Hannibal with faux concern. “I have to say prison hasn’t affected your constitution much.”

“What do you want, Dr. Graham?” Hannibal asked blandly. He figured Will was getting a kick out of seeing him react. 

The other man smiled slightly in surprise. He turned to the Monet they were both standing in front of before leaning in closer to him. “I wanna be  _ better _ than you. In every conceivable way.”

Hannibal smiled, genuinely smiled, for the first time all night. “And how is that going for you?”

Will shrugged. “So far so good. Madrid was fun.”

“And so it was.”

“I have to say, Dr. Lecter, that I really do admire your work. I have for some time now. Freddie Lounds told me all about you. I figured I had to see what all the fuss was about.”

Hannibal felt irritation settle inside him. His face hardened. “And has Ms. Lounds taken that long walk off of a short pier just yet?” It was an incredibly rude thing to say but, when it came to Freddie Lounds, Hannibal found that all his rules for decorum went out the window. 

If Will Graham was a thorn in Hannibal’s side then Freddie Lounds was a fucking stake. She attempted (and failed) to seduce Hannibal and rob him which he might have appreciated had she not drugged him and left him naked in an alley in a shady neighborhood in Amsterdam. Fortunately, Bedelia had just changed all the passwords and verification processes for his bank accounts the week before. The most that Freddie had been able to make off with were a few prized antiques of his.

“We could only dream,” Will replied. “You know, I’m still hopin’ a statue falls on her one day. She knows a few things but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t bother me more than a pack of mosquitoes after a hurricane.”

Hannibal looked at him in surprise. He hadn’t expected to find anything to mutually bond over with the doctor.

“And how did you come to know her?”

An unreadable expression flashed over Will’s face, vanishing before Hannibal could attempt to understand what it was. “That accent of yours...Swedish?”

“My forefathers twist in their graves in offense. No, I am Danish.” Hannibal replied. “And you?” It was a useless question to ask given that Hannibal knew exactly where he was from and he was certain Will probably knew that. If he did, he showed no indication.

Will shrugged. “Not nearly as exotic as you. Cajun through and through.”

Hannibal gored him with the intensity of his gaze. “No less exotic.” 

The other man cleared his throat uncomfortably and resumed his in depth study of the painting before them. He didn’t know what to make of Hannibal now that he was finally talking to him. He was a fascinating man. But the way he looked at Will, like he wanted to take him apart to dissect him out of curiosity, was something Will himself was all too familiar with as an academic: studying something purely for the sake of studying it. 

He was about to say something else to Hannibal when the room plunged into darkness. Amid the nervous chattering, a loud squelching noise was heard. Both Hannibal and Will had enough experience in their life to know what a stabbing sounded like. But this was worse. There was more nervous chattering before a loud thud was heard.

And then a blood curdling scream echoed in the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of what Hannibal says at the end of the chapter: "Vai a farti fottere" means "Go fuck yourself" in Italian (according to an hour of Google searches). Hope you enjoyed this! Comments would be nice.


End file.
